The Nineteenth Amendment (Amendment XIX) to the United States Constitution prohibits the states and the federal government from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex. The amendment was adopted on August 18, 1920, as the culmination of the women's suffrage movement in the United States, which fought at both state and national levels to achieve the vote. It followed the recommendation of the Supreme Court in Minor v. Happersett (1875), in which a unanimous Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment did not confer the right to vote on any citizen, male or female, and that an amendment was needed to change state laws denying women the right to vote. Since the 1860s, an increasing number of states had given women the right to vote, but several states still denied women the right to vote at the time the amendment was ratified.

The Nineteenth Amendment was originally introduced in Congress in 1878 by Senator Aaron A. Sargent. Forty-one years later, in 1919, Congress submitted it to the states for ratification. It was ratified by three-fourths of the states a year later, with Tennessee's ratification being the last needed to add the amendment to the Constitution. In Leser v. Garnett (1922), the Supreme Court rejected claims that the amendment was unconstitutionally adopted.

Background

Early woman suffrage efforts

The United States Constitution, adopted in 1789, left the boundaries of suffrage undefined. The only directly elected body created by the original Constitution was the U.S. House of Representatives, for which voter qualifications were explicitly delegated to the individual states.[2] While women had the right to vote in several of the early colonies in what would become the United States, after 1776, with the exception of New Jersey, all states adopted constitutions that denied voting rights to women. (Beginning in 1776, New Jersey's constitution initially granted suffrage to property-holding residents, including single and married women, but the state rescinded women's voting rights in 1807 and did not restore them until New Jersey ratified the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.)[3]

Text of the small ad that attracted a wide and diverse meeting of women and men at the first Women's Rights Convention, held in Seneca Falls, NY during July 1848.

While scattered movements and organizations dedicated to women's rights existed previously, the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention in New York is traditionally held as the start of the American women's rights movement. Attended by nearly 300 women and men, the convention was designed to "discuss the social, civil, and religious rights of women", and culminated in the adoption of the Declaration of Sentiments.[4] Signed by 68 women and 32 men, the Declaration called for equality of the sexes and addressed 16 areas in which U.S. women experienced oppression. The ninth of the document's 12 resolved clauses reads, "Resolved, That it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise."[5] This was the only clause that did not receive unanimous support by the convention's attendees, and passed by only a small majority.[6] While some attendees claimed that failure to enfranchise women was central to women's full equality, others felt this was too radical and could undermine efforts to successfully address the other issues raised in the Declaration. Some therefore chose not to sign the document or later removed their support of the Declaration of Sentiments.[7] Conveners Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton became key early leaders in the U.S. women's suffrage movement, often referred to at the time as the "woman suffrage movement". The Seneca Falls Convention can be viewed as a foundational event in the movement for women's suffrage at the federal level in the United States.[8]

Activism addressing federal women's suffrage was minimal during the Civil War. In 1865, at the conclusion of the war, a "Petition for Universal Suffrage", signed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, among others, called for a national constitutional amendment to "prohibit the several states from disenfranchising any of their citizens on the ground of sex".[9] The campaign was the first national petition drive to feature woman suffrage among its demands.[10] While suffrage bills were introduced into many state legislatures during this period, they were generally disregarded and few came to a vote.[11]

Reconstruction Amendments and woman suffrage

The women's suffrage movement, delayed by the American Civil War, resumed activities during the Reconstruction era (1865–1877). They included the formation of two rival suffrage organizations in 1869: the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), led by suffrage leaders Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), led by Lucy Stone.[12] Each organization had its own agenda and employed different strategies.[13] The NWSA's main effort was lobbying Congress for a women's suffrage amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The AWSA generally focused on a long-term effort of state campaigns to achieve women's suffrage on a state-by-state basis.[14]

During the Reconstruction era, women's rights leaders advocated for inclusion of universal suffrage as a civil right in the Reconstruction Amendments (the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments). Despite their efforts, these amendments did nothing to promote women's suffrage.[12][15] Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment explicitly discriminated between men and women by penalizing states which deprived adult male citizens of the vote, but not for denying the vote to adult female citizens.[16]

The NWSA attempted several unsuccessful court challenges in the mid-1870s.[17] Their legal argument, known as the "New Departure" strategy, contended that the Fourteenth Amendment (granting universal citizenship) and Fifteenth Amendment (granting the vote irrespective of race) together guaranteed voting rights to women.[18] The U.S. Supreme Court rejected this argument. In Bradwell v. Illinois, 83U.S.130 (1873), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Supreme Court of Illinois's refusal to grant Myra Bradwell a license to practice law was not a violation of the U.S. Constitution and refused to extend federal authority in support of women's citizenship rights.[19] In Minor v. Happersett, 88U.S.162 (1874), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment did not provide voting rights to U.S. citizens, it only guaranteed additional protection of privileges to citizens who already had them. If a state constitution limited suffrage to male citizens of the United States, then women in that state did not have voting rights.[20] After U.S. Supreme Court decisions between 1873 and 1875 denied voting rights to women in connection with the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, suffrage groups shifted their efforts to advocating for a new constitutional amendment.[18]

Suffrage in western states

Woman suffrage in Wyoming Territory; scene at the polls in Cheyenne, from a photo.

Continued settlement of the western frontier, along with the establishment of territorial constitutions, allowed the women's suffrage issue to be raised as the western territories progressed toward statehood. Through the activism of suffrage organizations and independent political parties, women's suffrage was included in the constitutions of Wyoming Territory (1869), Utah Territory (1870), and Washington Territory (1883).[15][21] In the late 1800s, women's suffrage in the American West was viewed as a way to attract new settlers and it was hoped that the presence of more women in the territories would provide a civilizing influence on the region. Women's suffrage also satisfied other political goals in the western states. In the Utah Territory, for example, women were granted voting rights in order to maintain a Mormon voting majority. Women's suffrage was however revoked in the territory in 1887, when Congress passed the Edmunds-Tucker Act that also prohibited polygamy. Women's suffrage was not restored in Utah until it achieved statehood in 1896.[13][21]

Existing state legislatures in the West, as well as those east of the Mississippi River, began to consider suffrage bills in the 1870s and 1880s. Several even held voter referendums, but they were unsuccessful[17] until the suffrage movement was revived in the 1890s. Full women's suffrage continued in Wyoming after it became a state in 1890. Colorado granted partial voting rights that allowed women to vote in school board elections in 1893 and Idaho granted women suffrage in 1896. Beginning with Washington in 1910, seven more western states passed women's suffrage legislation, including California in 1911, Oregon, Arizona, and Kansas in 1912, Alaska in 1913, and Montana and Nevada in 1914. Not all women in the western states were in favor of women's suffrage and not all western states granted full suffrage to women before final ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. However, all of the states that were successful in securing full voting rights for women before 1920 were located in the west.[13][22]

Post-Reconstruction

Elizabeth Cady Stanton before the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections. New York Daily Graphic, January 16, 1878, p. 501.

A federal amendment intended to grant women the right to vote was introduced in the U.S. Senate for the first time in 1878 by A.A. Sargent, the senator from California. Sargent, who had met and befriended Anthony on a train ride in 1872, was a dedicated women's suffrage advocate.[23] Stanton and other women testified before the Senate in support of the amendment.[24] The proposal sat in a committee until it was considered by the full Senate and rejected in a 16-to-34 vote in 1887.[25] An amendment proposed in 1888 in the U.S. House of Representatives called for limited suffrage for women who were spinsters or widows who owned property.[26]

By the 1890s, suffrage leaders began to recognize the need to broaden their base of support to achieve success in passing suffrage legislation at the national, state, and local levels. While western women, state suffrage organizations, and the AWSA concentrated on securing women's voting rights for specific states, efforts at the national level persisted through a strategy of congressional testimony, petitioning, and lobbying.[27][28] After the AWSA and NAWSA merged in 1890 to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association, the group directed its efforts to win state-level support for suffrage.[29] Suffragists had to campaign publicly for the vote, in order to convince male voters, state legislators, and members of Congress that American women wanted to be enfranchised and that women voters would benefit American society. Suffrage supporters also had to convince American women, many of whom were indifferent to the issue, that suffrage was something they wanted. Apathy among women was an ongoing obstacle that the suffragists had to overcome through organized grassroots efforts.[30] Despite the suffragists' efforts, no state granted women suffrage between 1896 and 1910, and the NAWSA shifted its focus toward passage of a national constitutional amendment.[29] Suffragists also continued to press for the right to vote in individual states and territories while retaining the goal of federal recognition.[25]

A body of popular literature written during the first decades of the 20th century developed around the idea of an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Plays include George Middleton’s one act farce Back of the Ballot (1915), Elizabeth Robins’s Votes for Women! (1907), Marion Craig Wentworth's War Brides: a play in one act (1915), and Gilson Willets, Your Girl and Mine: a play in one act (1914). Novels include Gertrude Atherton’s Julia France and Her Times (1912), Margaret Deland’s The Rising Tide (1916), Marietta Holley’s Samantha on the Woman Question (1913), Inez Haynes Irwin's Angel-Island (1913), Elizabeth Robins’ The Convert (1907), Caroline Abbot Stanley's A Modern Madonna (1906) (described as the “American Suffrage Novel”), Helen L. Winslow's A Woman for Mayor: A Novel of Today, 1909.[34]The Sturdy Oak (1916) was a collaborative novel with 25 authors including Dorothy Canfield, Elizabeth Jordan, Samuel Merwin, Kathleen Norris and Henry Leon Wilson. Based on a parlor game where a story is started by one to be continued by another, The Sturdy Oak was dedicated to Anna Howard Shaw, former vice-president and president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and appeared in serial form in Collier’s Weekly in 1917.[34] In non-fiction, the six volumes of The History of Woman Suffrage (1871–1922) was edited in three parts: the first three volumes were edited by Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Jocelyn Gage in 1871 and 1872; the fourth volume was edited by Anthony with Ida Husted Harper as her assistant and published in 1902; and volumes five and six were edited by Harper 20 years later and include the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.[35]

Proposal and ratification

A new focus on a federal amendment

Carrie Chapman Catt, President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, organized the "Winning Plan" that helped secure passage of the 19th Amendment.

In 1900, Carrie Chapman Catt succeeded Susan B. Anthony as the president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Catt revitalized NAWSA, turning the focus of the organization to the passage of the federal amendment while simultaneously supporting women who wanted to pressure their states to pass suffrage legislation. The strategy, which she later called "The Winning Plan", had several goals: women in states that had already granted presidential suffrage (the right to vote for the President) would focus on passing a federal suffrage amendment; women who believed they could influence their state legislatures would focus on amending their state constitutions and Southern states would focus on gaining primary suffrage (the right to vote in state primaries).[36] Simultaneously, the NAWSA worked to elect congressmen who supported suffrage for women.[37] By 1915, NAWSA was a large, powerful organization, with 44 state chapters and over 2 million members.[36]

Official program of the Woman Suffrage Procession, March 3, 1913, Washington, D.C.

In a break with NAWSA, Alice Paul and Lucy Burns founded the Congressional Union for Women Suffrage in 1913 to pressure the federal government to take legislative action. One of their first acts was to organize a women's suffrage parade in Washington, D.C. on March 3, 1913, the day before Woodrow Wilson's inauguration. The procession of more than 5,000 participants, the first of its kind, attracted a crowd of an estimated 500,000, as well as national media attention, but Wilson took no immediate action. In March 1917, the Congressional Union joined with Women's Party of Western Voters to form the National Woman's Party (NWP), whose aggressive tactics included staging more radical acts of civil disobedience and controversial demonstrations to draw more attention to the women's suffrage issue.[38]

Woman suffrage and World War I patriotism

When World War I started in 1914, women in eight states had already won the right to vote, but support for a federal amendment was still tepid. The war provided a new urgency to the fight for the vote. When the U.S. entered World War I, Catt made the controversial decision to support the war effort, despite the widespread pacifist sentiment of many of her colleagues and supporters.[39] As women joined the labor force to replace men serving in the military and took visible positions as nurses, relief workers, and ambulance drivers[40] to support the war effort, NAWSA organizers argued that women's sacrifices made them deserving of the vote.[37] By contrast, the NWP used the war to point out the contradictions of fighting for democracy abroad while restricting it at home.[37] In 1917, the NWP began picketing the White House to bring attention to the cause of women's suffrage.

In 1914 the constitutional amendment proposed by Sargeant, which was nicknamed the "Anthony Amendment", was once again considered by the Senate, where it was again rejected.[25] In April 1917 the "Anthony Amendment," which eventually became the Nineteenth Amendment, was reintroduced in the U.S. House and Senate. Picketing NWP members, nicknamed the "Silent Sentinels", continued their protests on the sidewalks outside the White House. On July 4, 1917, police arrested 168 of the protesters, who were sent to prison in Lorton, Virginia. Some of these women, including Lucy Burns and Alice Paul, went on hunger strikes; some were force fed while others were otherwise harshly treated by prison guards. The release of the women a few months later was largely due to increasing public pressure.[38]

Final congressional challenges

"Silent sentinels" begin 2 1/2 year campaign in front of the White House (1917).

In 1918, President Wilson faced a difficult midterm election and would have to confront the issue of women's suffrage directly.[37] Fifteen states had extended equal voting rights to women and, by this time, the President fully supported the federal amendment.[41][42] A proposal brought before the House in January 1918 passed with only one vote to spare. The vote was then carried into the Senate where Wilson made an appeal on the Senate floor, an unprecedented action at the time.[43] In a short speech, the President tied women's right to vote directly to the war, asking, "Shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not to a partnership of privilege and right?"[37] On September 30, 1918, the proposal fell two votes short of passage, prompting the NWP to direct campaigning to senators who had voted against the amendment.[42]

Between January 1918 and June 1919, the House and Senate voted on the federal amendment five times.[39] By 1919, there was considerable desire among politicians of both parties to have the proposal made part of the Constitution before the 1920 general elections.[citation needed] Suffragists pressured President Wilson to call a special session of Congress and he agreed to schedule one for May 19, 1919.[44] On May 21, 1919, the amendment passed the House 304 to 89, with 42 votes more than was necessary.[44] On June 4, 1919, it was brought before the Senate and, after Southern Democrats abandoned a filibuster,[37] 37 Republican senators joined 19 Democrats to pass the amendment with 56 ayes and 25 nays.[45]

Ratification

Highest level of women's suffrage laws just before adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment:[46][47]

Full suffrage

Presidential suffrage

Primary suffrage

Municipal suffrage

School, bond, or tax suffrage

Municipal suffrage in some cities

Primary suffrage in some cities

No suffrage

Carrie Chapman Catt and Alice Paul immediately mobilized members of the NAWSA and NWP to pressure states to ratify the amendment. Within a few days, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan did so, their legislatures being in session. By July, Montana, Arkansas, and Nebraska had approved ratification.[44] Other states proved more difficult to win over. Much of the opposition to the amendment came from Southern Democrats; only one southern state (Texas) and four border states had voted for ratification.[37]Alabama and Georgia were the first states to defeat ratification. The governor of Louisiana worked to organize 13 states to resist ratifying the amendment. The Maryland legislature refused to ratify the amendment and attempted to prevent other states from doing so.[44] Carrie Catt began appealing to Western governors, encouraging them to act swiftly.[44] By the end of 1919, 22 states had ratified the amendment.[44]

Resistance to ratification took many forms: anti-suffragists continued to claim that the amendment would never be approved by the November, 1920 elections and that special sessions were a waste of time and effort.[44] Other opponents to ratification filed lawsuits requiring the federal amendment to be approved by state referendums.[44] By June, 1920, after intense lobbying by both the NAWSA and the NWP, the amendment was ratified by 35 of the necessary 36 state legislatures.[44] Ratification would be determined by Tennessee.

In the middle of July, 1919, both opponents and supporters of the Anthony Amendment arrived in Nashville to lobby the General Assembly. Carrie Catt, representing the NAWSA, worked with state suffragist leaders, including Anne Dallas Dudley and Abby Crawford Milton. Sue Shelton White, a Tennessee native, represented the NWP.[48] Opposing them were the "Antis", in particular, Josephine Pearson, state president of the Southern Women's Rejection League of the Susan. B. Anthony Amendment, who had served as dean and chair of philosophy at Christian College in Columbia.[49] Pearson was assisted by Anne Pleasant, president of the Louisiana Women's Rejection League and the wife of a former Louisiana governor. Especially in the South, the question of women's suffrage was closely tied to issues of race.[50] While both white and African-American women worked toward women's suffrage, some white suffragists tried to appease southern states by arguing that votes for women could counter the black vote, strengthening white supremacy.[37] For the anti-suffragists in the south (the "Antis"), the federal amendment was viewed as a "Force Bill", one that Congress could use to enforce voting provisions not only for women, but for African-American men who were still effectively disenfranchised even after passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.[49] Carrie Catt warned suffrage leaders in Tennessee that the "Anti-Suffs" would rely on "lies, innuendoes, and near truths", raising the issue of race as a powerful factor in their arguments.[49]

Prior to the start of the General Assembly session on August 9, both supporters and opponents had lobbied members of the Tennessee Senate and House of Representatives. Though the Democratic governor of Tennessee, Albert H. Roberts, supported ratification, most lawmakers were still undecided. Anti-suffragists targeted members, meeting their trains as they arrived in Nashville to make their case.[48] When the General Assembly convened on August 9, both supporters and opponents set up stations outside of chambers, handing out yellow roses to suffrage supporters and red roses to the "Antis".[48] On August 12, the legislature held hearings on the suffrage proposal; the next day the Senate voted 24-5 in favor of ratification.[48] As the House prepared to take up the issue of ratification on August 18, lobbying intensified.[48] House Speaker Seth Walker attempted to table the ratification resolution, but was defeated twice, with a vote of 48-48. The vote on the resolution would be close. Representative Harry Burn, a Republican, had voted to table the resolution both times. When the vote was held again, Burn, voted yes. The 24-year-old claimed he supported women's suffrage as a "moral right", but had voted against it because he believed his constituents opposed it. In the final minutes before the vote, he received a note from his mother, urging him to vote yes.[48] Rumors immediately circulated that Burns and other lawmakers had been bribed, but newspaper reporters found no evidence of this.[48]

The same day that ratification passed in the General Assembly, Speaker Walker filed a motion to reconsider. When it became clear that he did not have enough votes to carry the motion, representatives opposing suffrage boarded a train, fleeing Nashville for Decatur, Alabama to block the House from taking action on the reconsideration motion by preventing a quorum.[48] Thirty-seven legislators fled to Decatur, issuing a statement that ratifying the amendment would violate their oath to defend the state constitution.[48] The ploy failed and when the House reconvened to take the final procedural steps that would reaffirm ratification, Tennessee suffragists sat at the desks of the missing Anti delegates.[49]

On August 18, 1920, Tennessee narrowly approved the Nineteenth Amendment, with 50 of 99 members of the Tennessee House of Representatives voting yes.[41][51] Upon signing the ratification certificate, the Governor of Tennessee sent it by registered mail to the U.S. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby, whose office received it at 4:00 a.m. on August 26, 1920. Once certified as correct, Bainbridge signed the Proclamation of the Women's Suffrage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in the presence of his secretary only, making the Nineteenth Amendment officially law as of that date.[52] This provided the final ratification necessary to add the amendment to the Constitution,[53] making the United States the twenty-seventh country in the world to give women the right to vote.[13]

Ratification timeline

Alice Paul and other suffragists sewing stars on suffrage flag for each state as 19th Amendment is ratified.

The Congress proposed the Nineteenth Amendment on June 4, 1919, and the following states ratified the amendment.[54][55]

Illinois (June 10, 1919)[56][57] Because of a miswording in the introduction of the bill, but not the amendment itself, Illinois reaffirmed passage of the amendment on June 17 and submitted a brief to confirm that the second vote was merely a legal formality. Illinois was acknowledged by the U.S. Secretary of State as the first state to ratify the amendment.[58]

Wyoming (January 26, 1920)[70] Wyoming as a territory was the first globally to grant women full voting rights in 1869. In 1892, Wyoming's Theresa Jenkins was the first woman to serve as a national party convention delegate; now in 1919 she thanked Wyoming legislators for their unanimous decision to support the 19th amendment.[70]

New Mexico (February 16, 1920)[70] New Mexico's ratification came a day after the hundredth anniversary of Susan B. Anthony's birth; suffragists used this centennial to lament that ratification had not yet been achieved.[70]

West Virginia (March 10, 1920, confirmed on September 21, 1920) West Virginia's ratification followed the dramatic turnaround of a voting block instigated by state Senator Jesse A. Bloch demonstrated against by suffragists from around the nation who had descended upon the state capitol.[72]

Washington (March 22, 1920) Washington was holding out to have the honor of being the last state to ratify but, in the end, a female legislator brought the matter to the floor and ratification was unanimously approved in both houses.[73]

Legal challenges

Leser v Garnett

The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld the amendment's validity in Leser v. Garnett, 258U.S.130 (1922).[79] Maryland citizens Mary D. Randolph, "'a colored female citizen' of 331 West Biddle Street,"[80] and Cecilia Street Waters, "a white woman, of 824 North Eutaw Street",[80] applied for and were granted registration as qualified Baltimore voters on October 12, 1920. To have their names removed from the list of qualified voters, Oscar Leser and others brought suit against the two women on the sole grounds that they were women, arguing that they were not eligible to vote because the Constitution of Maryland limited suffrage to men[81] and the Maryland legislature had refused to vote to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment. Two months before, on August 26, 1920, the federal government had proclaimed the amendment incorporated into the Constitution.[79]

Leser claimed that the national amendment "destroyed State autonomy" because it increased Maryland's electorate without the state's consent. The U.S. Supreme Court answered that the Nineteenth Amendment had similar wording to the Fifteenth Amendment, which had expanded state electorates without regard to race for more than 50 years by that time despite being rejected by six states, including Maryland.[78][79] Leser further argued that the state constitutions in some ratifying states did not allow their legislatures to ratify. The Court replied that state ratification was a federal function granted under Article V of the U.S. Constitution and not subject to a state constitution's limitations.[79] Finally, those bringing suit asserted the Nineteenth Amendment was not adopted because Tennessee and West Virginia violated their own rules of procedure. The Court ruled that the point was moot because Connecticut and Vermont had subsequently ratified the amendment, providing a sufficient number of state ratifications to adopt the Nineteenth Amendment even without Tennessee and West Virginia. The Court also ruled that Tennessee's and West Virginia's certifications of their state ratifications was binding and had been duly authenticated by the U.S. Secretary of State.[79] As a result of the Court's ruling, Randolph and Waters were permitted to become registered voters in Baltimore.[79]

Fairchild v Hughes

Fairchild v. Hughes, 258U.S.126 (1922),[82] was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that a general citizen, in a state that already had women's suffrage, lacked standing to challenge the validity of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.

Effects

VOTE poster, League of Women Voters. c.1920

Women's voting behavior

Ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment enfranchised 26 million American women in time for the 1920 U.S. presidential election.[83] Many legislators feared that a powerful women's bloc would emerge in American politics. This fear led to the passage of such laws as the Sheppard–Towner Maternity and Infancy Protection Act of 1921, which expanded maternity care during the 1920s.[84] Newly enfranchised women and women's groups prioritized a reform agenda rather than party loyalty and their first goal was the Sheppard-Towner Act. It was the first federal social security law and made a dramatic difference before it was allowed to lapse in 1929.[85] Other efforts at the federal level in the early 1920s that related to women labor and women's citizenship rights included the establishment of a Women's Bureau in the U.S. Department of Labor in 1920 and passage of the Cable Act in 1922.[86] After the U.S. presidential election in 1924, politicians realized that the "women's bloc" they had feared did not actually exist and they did not need to cater to "women's issues" after all.[87] The eventual appearance of an American women's voting bloc has been tracked to various dates, depending on the source, from the 1950s.[88] to 1970.[89] Around 1980, a nationwide gender gap in voting had emerged, with women usually favoring the Democratic candidate in presidential elections.[90]

According to political scientists J. Kevin Corder and Christina Wolbrecht, few women turned out to vote in the first national elections after the Nineteenth Amendment gave them the right to do so. In 1920, just 36 percent of eligible women turned out to vote (compared with 68 percent of men).[91][92] The low turnout was partly due to other barriers to voting, such as literacy tests, long residency requirements and poll taxes. Inexperience with voting and persistent beliefs that voting was inappropriate for women may also have kept turnout low.[91][92] The participation gap was lowest between men and women in swing states at the time, in states that had closer races such as Missouri and Kentucky, and where barriers to voting were lower.[91][92] By 1960, women were turning out to vote in presidential elections in greater numbers than men and a trend of higher female voting engagement has continued into 2018.[93]

Limitations on women of color

The passage of the Nineteenth Amendment did little to improve the lives and advance the rights of women of color. African-Americans had gained the right to vote, but for 75 percent of them it was granted in name only, as state constitutional loopholes kept them from exercising their right.[33] Prior to the passage of the amendment, southern politicians held firm in their convictions to not allow African-American women to vote.[94] They had to fight to not only secure their own right to vote, but the right of African-American men as well.[95]

Three million women south of the Mason-Dixon line remained disfranchised after the passage of the amendment, as voter suppression had already been well established in the area.[94][32][96] Election officials regularly obstructed access to the ballot box, and as newly enfranchised African-American women attempted to register, officials increased methods of fraud, intimidation, and state violence.[32] In 1926, a group of women attempting to register in Birmingham, Alabama were beaten by officials.[97] Incidents such as this, threats of violence and job losses, and legalized prejudicial practices all blocked women of color from voting.[98]

Other minorities faced similar discrimination and limitations on their right to vote. Native Americans were granted citizenship in 1924, but state policies prohibited them from voting. By 194 they had earned the right to vote in New Mexico and Arizona, but some states continued to bar them from voting until 1957.[97] Poll taxes and literacy tests kept Latin American women from voting. Literate women in Puerto Rico, for example, could not vote until 1932, and universal voting rights did not become law there until 1935. National immigration laws prevented Asians from gaining citizenship until 1952.[97][98][38]

African-Americans continued to be denied their voting rights until a new movement arose in the 1950s and 1960s, which posited voting rights as civil rights.[94][97] Nearly a thousand civil rights workers converged on the South to support voting rights as part of Freedom Summer. However, state officials continued to refuse registration until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibited racial discrimination in voting.[32][98] For the first time, states were forbidden from imposing discriminatory restrictions on voting eligibility, and mechanisms were placed allowing the federal government to enforce its provisions.[97] Further, the 1975 extensions of the Voting Rights Act included requiring bilingual ballots and voting materials in certain regions, making it easier for Latin American women to vote.[98][97]

Legacy

Ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment did not grant full voting rights to all American women until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 due to legal loopholes in the national amendment.[38] Other limitations included allowing women to serve on juries, run for elective offices, and have full equality in the eyes of the law (pay, rights, etc.).[citation needed]

Commemorations

On August 26, 2016, a monument commemorating Tennessee's role in providing the required 36th state ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment was unveiled in Centennial Park (Nashville).[99] The memorial, erected by the Tennessee Suffrage Monument, Inc.[100] and created by Alan LeQuire, features likenesses of suffragists who were particularly involved in securing Tennessee's ratification: Carrie Chapman Catt; Anne Dallas Dudley; Abby Crawford Milton; Juno Frankie Pierce; and Sue Shelton White.[citation needed]

An annual celebration of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment known as Women's Equality Day on August 26, 1973. There usually is heightened attention and news media coverage during momentous anniversaries such as the 75th (1995) and 100th (2020), as well as in 2016 because of the presidential election.[citation needed]

In popular culture

The 1976 song "Sufferin' Till Suffrage" from Schoolhouse Rock!, performed by Essra Mohawk and written by Bob Dorough and Tom Yohe, states in part, "Not a woman here could vote, no matter what age, Then the 19th Amendment struck down that restrictive rule ... Yes the 19th Amendment Struck down that restrictive rule."[101][102]

One Woman, One Vote is a 1995 PBS documentary narrated by Susan Sarandon chronicling the Seneca Falls Convention through the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.[103][104]

In 2013, best-selling author of The Fault in Our Stars, John Green, produced a video entitled Women in the 19th Century: Crash Course US History #31 providing an overview of the women's movement leading to the Nineteenth Amendment.[109][110]

In 2018 an album was released by various artists called 27: The Most Perfect Album, featuring songs inspired by the 27 amendments to the U.S. Constitution; the song inspired by the Nineteenth Amendment is called "A Woman's Right" and is by Dolly Parton.[111][112]

In August 2018, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Academy Award-winning director/producer Steven Spielberg announced plans to make a television series based on Elaine Weiss's best-selling book, The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote.[113][114]

^"But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State." (US Constitution, Amendment XIV, Section 2, emphasis added).

^Illinois courts denied Myra Bradwell's application to practice law in that state because she was a married women and due to her marital status she could not be bound by legal contracts she made with her clients. See Baker 2009, p. 3.